About the Center

The Carsey-Wolf Center supports research, teaching, and public programming about media. Our goal is to foster informed dialogue, critical skills, historical understanding, and new forms of literacy for a global and interconnected world. Engaging media experts, students, and scholars, our research and programming is committed to broadening the ways in which we understand media.

Upcoming Events

Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) leaves his beloved wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) at home in Wismar while he travels to meet the sinister Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski), thereby setting in motion a terrifying and deadly sequence of events.

The elderly doorman of a grand hotel is demoted from the job in which he takes great pride in this technically dazzling, bittersweet film. The recent restoration of F.W. Murnau's final German film will be screened with live musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla.

The screening of a recent restoration of the film, provided by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung, will be accompanied live by pianist Michael Mortilla. Mortilla will join UCSB Professor of Film and Media Studies Charles Wolfe for a post-screening discussion.

In Fritz Lang’s first American film, everyman Joe (Spencer Tracy) is en route to a joyful reunion with his fiancée Katherine (Sylvia Sidney) when he is caught up in a small town’s investigation of a kidnapping. Mob violence erupts, and after narrowly escaping an attempted lynching, Joe seeks revenge via the justice system.

Although the film was released in 1936, Fury raises issuesabout race, technology, mob violence, the corruption of political and legal institutions that remain remarkably current. Professor Eric Rentschler (Germanic Languages and Literatures, Harvard) will be joined by Carsey-Wolf Center Director Patrice Petro for a post-screening discussion.

Nostalgia for the Future examines Indian modernity, the making of the citizen and the architecture of the home. It looks at four distinct imaginations of homes and bodies across examples of buildings constructed over the course of a century.

Tempestad presents the parallel stories two women victimized by corruption in Mexico. Their voices echo over the landscape and highways of Mexico as they describe how official injustice allowed violence to take control of their lives, desires and dreams.

National Bird follows the dramatic journey of three whistleblowers who are determined to break the silence around one of the most controversial current affairs issues of our time: the secret U.S. drone war. At the center of the film are three U.S. military veterans. Plagued by guilt over participating in the killing of faceless people in foreign countries, they decide to speak out publicly, despite the possible consequences.

The Pollock Theater is a superbly equipped and beautifully appointed facility, dedicated to year-round programming of an international range of films and filmmakers. A classroom by day and a public theater by night, the Pollock Theater is a place in which students and the community come together to screen films and engage in direct conversations with filmmakers, critics, and scholars. More >

The Carsey-Wolf Center’s internship programs provide UC Santa Barbara students with opportunities to develop practical applications of the knowledge gained in their studies. Media interns learn the processes of making compelling media content by working with leading creative professionals. Pollock Theater interns gain hands-on experience in television production. More>